Basic civic amenities elude Northwest Delhi colonies

New Delhi: While the political parties are busy over petty issues like communalism and casteism, the residents of unauthorised colonies of Northwest Delhi constituency are living in miserable conditions due to lack of basic amenities, such as water, electricity, sewage, transportation, and law and order.

There is a big chunk of voters in the national capital who reside in these colonies and all major political parties have been trying to woo them for years by making claims of regularising the unauthorised colonies before parliamentary and Assembly elections.

However, it is being alleged that these were just false promises.

Official estimates till 2015 peg the number of unauthorised colonies in the city at 1,650 with about 50 lakh residents.

Earlier in 2012, the then chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, tried hard to regularise the colonies after Congress’ electoral debacle in the municipal polls held in April 2012. She said her government made a “historical decision” to regularise 895 colonies out of the 1,650.

Later in 2015, the newbie Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) hijacked this issue from Congress by promising to provide registration rights with regard to property.

“We will provide water, sewer lines, electricity, schools, and hospitals in a systematic and phased manner. Multi-pronged approach is the only way to empower unauthorised colonies and has never been attempted by BJP or Congress. Within one year, these unauthorised colonies will be regularised and residents will be given ownership rights,” the 2015 AAP manifesto had promised.

However, the process is stuck as the Union urban development ministry has asked the Delhi government to submit details of plot size and population in these colonies.

Pratap Vihar and Karan Vihar area, few of the 895 colonies which were provisionally regularised by the then Congress government, are still struggling with registration rights and the basic issues of water, electricity, hospitals, and sewage problems.

The regularisation of such colonies has been hanging for the past 12 years.

The BJP-led Central government and the AAP government in Delhi are at loggerheads over regularisation and blame each other for the delay.

AAP, in its 2019 manifesto, promised that every Delhi resident will have an own house and unauthorised colonies will be regularised and Delhi will be made a clean and beautiful city.